Ghost
by sapphicphoenix
Summary: Has shore leave ever gone more horribly wrong? Can Janeway fix everything in time?
1. Chapter 1

There was no warning before the first bomb exploded. Kathryn had been walking slowly through the streets of the alien city, browsing shop windows while making her way to the well-recommended café where she was to meet Chakotay for lunch on an afternoon of shore leave. Unfortunately for them, somebody else seemed to have other ideas. A large chunk of flying debris narrowly missed Kathryn's head as she fought to regain her bearings. Whatever kind of explosive that was, it had done a lot of damage. The city's skyline was drastically altered as once-proud buildings lay in rubble on the ground. People ran in every direction, screaming and shouting for missing friends. And in all the chaos, Kathryn had one thing on her mind – find Chakotay.

A mad rush of terrified people knocked her to the ground and caused her to choke on the dust their running feet stirred up. She regained her balance on trembling legs just as the next explosion rocked the ground.

"Janeway to _Voyager_," she hailed. "We need an emergency beam-out."

_"We are unable to get a lock on you at the moment,_" Tuvok's annoyingly calm tones responded. _"There is some kind of atmospheric radiation above your position, likely caused by the explosions. It is rendering the targeting scanners inoperative in that area. You must clear the region before we can beam you out._"

"Acknowledged. I'll find Chakotay and call you when we're out."

There were now emergency teams racing through the streets, trying to contain terrified mobs and rescue the victims trapped in the rubble. A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach forced Kathryn to consider the possibility that Chakotay might be one of those victims, but for now she would keep looking. The place she was supposed to meet him was further into the town. She would have to keep pressing against the flow to get there past the fleeing crowds.

Shoving her way through the crowded streets, she finally found the fountain that served as a landmark in the city. She was almost there. She could see outdoor tables and chairs near what must have been the café, but there was only debris in that part of the street. The building was gone.

Kathryn ran desperately towards the rubble, but there was no sign of survivors. Spinning around, she scanned the crowds for his familiar face, but she saw nothing but fear and chaos. He was gone.

"Kathryn!" A strong voice bellowed out over the noise of the crowd, and Kathryn's heart leapt for joy. He was across the street, trying to push his way through the masses moving towards the large building behind him. Kathryn began to run towards him. It was difficult to keep him in her sight while fighting her way through the crowd. She caught a glimpse of him as he stopped and turned to something behind him then changed direction, moving back with the crowd. It took a minute for Kathryn to find him again, helping an old woman who was struggling to get up from the ground. Then she saw something else.

Time moved in slow motion as the building right behind where Chakotay was standing burst into a large ball of flame. Roof segments flew outwards and walls caved in. She was surrounded by mass hysteria, people screaming and pushing at her, and for a horrified minute she couldn't move or think.

Then she was dashing desperately to where she had last seen him. There was a massive amount of rubble there, and her hands were soon bleeding as she desperately hauled it aside, digging deeper into it. She found him, finally, with his body thrown on top of the old woman. It had been a futile gesture, though, as Kathryn found no signs of life in the frozen, unseeing eyes. She carefully maneuvered herself so that she could roll Chakotay over and rest his head in her lap, trying to make him comfortable. After a long moment, he began to stir. She gazed down into his pained brown eyes and tried to offer comfort with her smile.

"Why is it," he coughed painfully, "that every time both of us leave the ship… something like this happens?"

"The universe doesn't like us spending time together," she replied, wiping the dust and blood off his cheek with her thumb.

"So much for shore leave," he muttered.

"What you need is sickbay. You're bleeding everywhere."

"I think I feel some internal injuries too."

"You're going to be fine, Chakotay. I won't let you not be."

Chakotay chuckled softly, then moaned in pain.

"There are some things even you can't control, Kathryn."

He lapsed into silence then, leaving Kathryn to fight her rising fear that _Voyager_ wouldn't get them out in time, since there was no way Chakotay was in any condition to get to a transport site.

"Will you marry me?"

The question shocked her mind into silence for a long minute.

"What?"

"I said," he coughed, "will you marry me?"

"Hell of a time for a proposal."

"I'm serious." Moving slowly and wincing at the pain, he slipped his hand into his pocket and dug out a tiny velvet box. Kathryn took it and opened it slowly to reveal the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. Tiny sapphires were nestled in a frame of silver, glinting brightly under the eerie orange glow of the sky. Now she knew why he had seemed more eager than usual for their shared shore leave.

"Oh, Chakotay," she breathed. "It's beautiful."

There was no reply.

His eyes were closed, and his breathing had become shallow and laboured. Kathryn shoved the ring box in her pocket and began frantically trying to wake him. With the head injuries he'd sustained when the building collapsed, it was unlikely he _didn't _have a concussion, and who knew what other injuries. A drop of water splashed onto his face, and Kathryn realized she was crying. She wiped it off gently, still murmuring his name, begging him to open his eyes. And then she realized he wasn't breathing.

With the first chest compression she felt the snap. If there weren't internal injuries before, there were now. She worked desperately to convince his heart to start beating again and tried to breathe life back into his lungs. She had no idea if it was doing any good, but she kept at it. She had to. She couldn't let him go now.

The crackle of her commbadge brought her out of her pain-filled trance. _"Delta Flyer to Janeway_," Paris' voice called. _"Stand by for transport."_

"Hurry, Tom," she called, already knowing it might be too late. As she felt another tear roll down her cheek, she leaned down to kiss Chakotay's blood-stained forehead. "I would love nothing more than to marry you," she whispered.

Then she felt the tingle of the transporter beam whisk them away.


	2. Chapter 2

Kathryn fought against the pull of the darkness and opened her eyes. To her surprise, she did not see the familiar ceiling of sickbay, nor did she seem to be in the _Delta Flyer_. The last thing she remembered was the explosions, and the transporter… and Chakotay. Oh, Chakotay!

She fought back the tears that pricked at her eyes and sat up. The room around her was entirely unfamiliar. She stood up and looked around.

The walls around her were inlaid with control stations of varying designs and monitors displaying text in an alien language. In the center of the room was a column, upon which was laid a mosaic of monitors, showing every conceivable section of the Capital City. Uniformed aliens that she recognized as being Azkarian moved about her with unhurried purpose.

She remembered the warm welcome the Azkarians had given her and her crew when they had come across their planet and told their story. Throughout the process of negotiating for supplies, Janeway had found her hosts' generosity to be a breath of fresh air from the usual greeting the Delta Quadrant races gave them.

"Excuse me," she approached the nearest person, who was working at a console. "Can you tell me where I am?"

The alien did not respond.

"Can you at least tell me what happened to the man I was with? He needs medical attention."

The alien continued to work their console in silence. Janeway waved a hand in front of their face, but they didn't move.

"Huh." She turned to look around for someone else to talk to and spotted a well-dressed person with a clipboard strolling around the other side of the room. "Excuse me!" she called to them. "Sorry to bother you, but can you help me out for a moment?"

The alien didn't even look at her.

"Dammit, can somebody tell me where Chakotay is?!"

"If he's not here he's dead," a voice said from behind her.

Kathryn swung around and saw a woman she hadn't noticed before. Her uniform was different than the others, being a dark green instead of grey and a lot looser with large pockets. She wore heavy boots and had long black hair pulled back in a braid down her back. She stared at Janeway with piercing golden eyes.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"Damned if I know."

"And what does that mean?"

"It means I woke up here just now and would like an explanation for what's going on," Janeway said, crossing her arms. She levelled a glare at the woman.

"Your consciousness must have gotten caught up in the effects of the Device," the woman said.

"What device?"

"The Device that's reset time." The woman walked over to the central pillar and tapped at a monitor. "Come here and see."

Janeway walked slowly over and peered at the display. She recognized the view she saw as the front of the Capital Building, where she had met with the planet's leaders to discuss trade and shore leave. As she watched, she saw a figure in a Starfleet uniform leave the building and walk further into the city. The woman beside her zoomed in on the image and Kathryn realized that the figure was herself.

"So time has reset."

"Yes."

"And that's me."

"Yes."

"But I'm me."

"You're the consciousness of a temporally displaced version of you," the woman said.

"So I'm a ghost."

"Yes."

"How…"

"We have a device that rewinds time for a little bit, giving us a chance to fix our mistakes. And by the gods, we've made a huge mistake. We planned so carefully and then…" She shook her head. "My mission right now is to get you and whoever of your crew is still on the surface to leave. Now. Before the missiles strike."

"Why? Who are you?"

The woman raised her fist to her chest in a salute. "I am N'Taka, intelligence officer for the Azkarian Resistance."

"And you care about me and my crew because…"

"Because no aliens were meant to die." N'Taka began pacing the room. She phased right through several officers who showed no clue that she was there. "We planned so carefully," she said. "We wanted as few people as possible to be hurt, and we didn't want to involve you. We tried to keep you away. We did. But we didn't realize that some of you were already on our planet. And now…"

The room trembled as a shock wave shook the building. The people around them began to go into panic mode, shouting out information as it came in on their terminals.

"That's the first missile," N'Taka shouted over the din. "Because I've spent all this time talking to you, I'm not going to complete my task before the next loop."

"I'll apologize later!" Janeway turned back to the monitor beside her, scrolling through different views of the city until she found the area that had been hit. Smoke billowed through the streets and small fires burned in the rubble. Terrified civilians ran in every direction, some fleeing for their lives, others searching for lost friends.

As she watched, another ball of fire streaked down from the heavens and impacted the ground with an enormous explosion. She spotted a Starfleet uniform amidst the chaos and realized it was herself, searching for Chakotay.

"You have to help me!" She shouted to N'Taka. "There must be some way of getting Chakotay out of there alive!"

"I have some ideas," N'Taka replied, "but first, there's one more thing I should tell you." They both braced themselves as another shockwave hit them. "I, being the one who used the Device, am immune to this nasty little side effect, but you weren't attuned to the Device so you will probably experience this one little thing. You see, in order to make sure I could complete my goal, these loops will keep repeating and so—"

Just then, a cry went up from the other side of the room. "Commander!" someone called. "Something's happening! There's a shockwave of some kind. I've never seen anything like it!" The room was rocked by a massive force, knocking Janeway off her feet. She felt a strange dizzying sensation, then just as suddenly as it came, it passed. She stood up and looked around.

Everything was as it was before. The uniformed officers manned their stations and walked around with unhurried purpose. One of them walked through Janeway, and she realized she was still invisible. She turned to her left and saw N'Taka, standing up and brushing herself off. And she saw… _herself._

"What the hell," both Janeways said in unison.


	3. Chapter 3

"Okay, so that's the glitch I was trying to tell you about," N'Taka said. "Because you weren't attuned to the Device and just happened to get caught up in it…"

"The loop keeps repeating and so do I," the first Janeway said.

"What loop? What's going on?" the second Janeway asked, her eyes darting between her counterpart and N'Taka.

N'Taka face-palmed.

"We're ghosts because there's a time loop and to stop it we need to get our material self and Chakotay away from here to safety," the first Janeway said.

"That's… the essential part of it," N'Taka affirmed.

"Okay, so what do we do?" the second Janeway asked.

"I have some plans," N'Taka said, "and it will be so much easier with both of your help."

=/\=

Kathryn – or rather, one of the Kathryns – ran through the streets as fast as she could. She phased through dozens of people as she dashed towards the café where she knew Chakotay would be waiting. She rounded the corners, passing shop-front after shop-front until she skidded to a stop in front of the right place. Through the window, she saw Chakotay waiting inside.

She ran through the open doorway and stopped at Chakotay's table. "Chakotay! Chakotay, we need to get out of here! There's a bomb coming and you're going to die and you need to leave, come on!" She tried to grab his arm but her hands phased right through him. "Dammit!" She slammed her hands down on the table in frustration.

The table shook and Chakotay jumped.

_I can't interact with people but I can interact with objects,_ she realized. She tossed the table over in one swift motion. Chakotay jumped up and stepped back.

A server came running over. "Is everything alright, sir?" they asked.

"Yeah, I… guess I just accidentally knocked the table over," Chakotay said.

"No, I did! Me! It was me!" Kathryn was practically jumping up and down in front of him, willing him to see her.

He did not see her. He sat back down as the server righted the table and left.

Kathryn sighed and felt her shoulders slump.

=/\=

With N'Taka's help, Kathryn's – the other Kathryn's – consciousness materialized on the Bridge of Voyager. She immediately strode up to the Ops console and began to get to work.

"Sir?" Harry said. "Someone seems to have tapped into my console. They're trying to open a comm channel."

"Who is it?"

"Unknown."

"Lock them out."

Harry locked out the comm lines and Janeway immediately unlocked it again.

"Uh, Tuvok?" Harry said. "Someone just used the Captain's command codes to unlock the comm lines."

"Was it the Captain?"

"I don't know."

"Where is the source of the uplink to your console?"

"I can't find it." Harry tapped around frustratedly. "It seems to be coming from right here, but I'm not doing it."

"Lock out the entire console and go to Engineering to run a diagnostic on it," Tuvok ordered.

Janeway sighed as Harry left the Bridge. So much for that plan. She walked up to the crewman who was manning Tactical and tapped their commbadge. It chirped obligingly, and the crewman looked down at it in confusion.

"Janeway to Chakotay," she said. "Can you hear me?"

There was no response.

"Dammit."

She wandered towards the console behind the command chairs, thinking hard. Maybe she could tap into the transporters and beam them out directly. She set to work calling up the transporter subroutines.

Tuvok, sitting in the Captain's chair, heard the beeping behind him and stood up to investigate.

"No, Tuvok, not now," Janeway groaned. She tried to convince the targeting scanners to lock on, but something was blocking the sensors from getting a clear reading of their bio signs.

"Ensign," Tuvok said, coming up to stand beside her console, "did you activate this console?"

"No, sir," said the crewman at Tactical.

"The transporter's targeting scanners have been activated," Tuvok said. "Someone is attempting to beam the Captain and Chakotay back to the ship."

"'Attempting' being the operative word there." Janeway frowned and scanned the atmosphere more carefully. Some kind of radiation had permeated the upper atmosphere, disrupting their sensors. Why hadn't anyone noticed it before now?

Tuvok tapped at the console and deactivated it, then returned to his seat.

Wait a minute, the bombs hadn't gone off yet, Janeway realized. Why was there radiation in the atmosphere already? Radiation that looked as though it wasn't doing any harm to the environment or the people below. Radiation in so small a quantity as to remain undetected unless someone were looking for it, but just enough of it to disrupt their targeting scanners.

It all seemed very convenient.

=/\=

Kathryn – the other, other Kathryn – was trying everything she could think of to get Chakotay to leave. She knocked over tables and lamps and pulled his chair out from under him but still he remained. Every now and then he would pull a little velvet box from his pocket and caress it gently, then pocket it again and go back to staring out the windows, watching for her arrival. She didn't dare think what the servers were making of the chaos she was creating around them.

Finally, in exasperation, Kathryn leaned her head against the front window and sighed. It seemed like nothing would get this man to budge.

Behind her, she heard the scraping of a chair and then footsteps coming towards her. She looked up and saw Chakotay moving to the door.

"Finally!" she exclaimed.

But he stopped in the doorway and looked around, puzzled. Then he returned to his seat, clearly disappointed.

Kathryn frowned. What was he looking at? She turned back to the window, gazing outside for anything that might have caught his attention.

Then the footsteps were back and Chakotay went back to the doorway and looked around. He stepped outside and stopped on the other side of the window and touched the glass.

The glass right where her face was reflected in front of her.

He couldn't see _her_ but he could see her reflection.

Chakotay walked back inside and looked back at the glass. Kathryn tapped on it.

"Chakotay! Chakotay, I'm here! You need to leave. Go. Go!" She motioned at the glass, frantically waving for him to get out of there.

"Chakotay to Janeway," he tapped his commbadge.

"I'm here. I'm on my way to you now," came the reply.

"Okay. No hurry." He went back to his table and sat down.

"Your mind is playing tricks on you," he said quietly, shaking his head.

"No!" Kathryn yelled. In a moment of desperation she turned and swung her fist at the window.

The glass shattered, and the world around them shook as the first bomb went off.


	4. Chapter 4

"What went wrong?" N'Taka asked, throwing her hands up in the air. "Why are we back here again?" She paced the monitor room of the Capital Building furiously.

"It's your device. You tell me," one of the Kathryns replied.

"We default back here because the Device was programmed to send my consciousness to these temporal and spatial coordinates," N'Taka ground out. "But my question is, _why_ did the loop start over? You tried two different options and both of you failed?!"

"I'd say you didn't have any luck either or we wouldn't be back here," one of the Kathryns pointed out.

"True," N'Taka admitted. "My plans to fix this are difficult to execute while I'm effectively a ghost. But I'm not giving up. And neither should you." She pointed at one of the Kathryns. "You stay here and help me to succeed this time around. Maybe you'll have better luck with their technology." She pointed at a second Kathryn and said, "You go back to your ship and try again to get yourself and your Commander off the planet." To the third Kathryn she said, "I'm sending you back to my base. Your technology is more advanced than ours, so maybe you'll be able to find a way that we haven't to reprogram the missiles or divert them or… _something_."

Each Kathryn nodded in turn and N'Taka closed her eyes and vanished before them, then one by one, two of the Kathryns disappeared as well.

=/\=

Kathryn materialized in a small building filled with people, all wearing the same uniform as N'Taka. Most of the crowd was gathered by a large computer terminal, watching the screen intently. Multiple windows on the screen showed scrolling readouts and countdown timers. Others milled about, manning smaller terminals with data scrolling down the screen in the aliens' distinctive language.

It seemed that the missiles had already been launched.

She walked around for a minute, familiarizing herself with the setup. The main terminal seemed to show the path of the missiles as they flew towards the capital city. The timers counted relentlessly downward, counting down, so she felt, to her doom.

Suddenly, a voice behind her shouted, "Leader! We have a problem."

A man pushed his way out of the group and approached the speaker. "What is it?"

"The alien captain hasn't left the city yet. And what's more, apparently at least one of her crew transported down to join her."

"I was sure the radiation cloud would prevent any more from transporting down." The leader ran his hands through his short, white hair. "We can't risk involving the aliens in our dispute with the government." He clapped his hands twice and everyone turned to look at him expectantly. "I need all of you to look for a way to stop the missiles before they reach their target. There are alien lives in danger. Sergeant, get me a communication line with the Capital Building; maybe they can call the aliens to safety. Who here is the most familiar with how to use the Device?"

"Operative N'Taka, sir."

"Tell her to be ready to use it in case this all goes to hell."

Kathryn began to look over the control panels, searching for any way to prevent the missiles from reaching their target, but it did not look good.

=/\=

N'Taka sighed and punched the monitor before her. It shattered under her fist, causing several people around her to startle and come to investigate.

"This is hopeless," she groaned. "I can't get into any of the communication systems, I can't trigger a citywide evacuation, I can't even reprogram these sensors to detect the missiles."

"I'm having no luck either," Kathryn admitted. "These transporter systems are entirely unfamiliar to me and they're locked behind too many authorization codes."

"Is there any other way to get your crewman out of that part of the city from here?"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking." Kathryn closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "There's only one more thing I can think of."

She approached the nearest console and pressed the big red icon at the top of the screen. An alarm immediately went off in the room.

"Who did that?" someone shouted.

"It's my console but I didn't activate the alarm," a worker said, confusing creasing their face.

Another alarm went off as Kathryn tapped another button. She went to another console and set off yet another alarm.

"What's going on?" someone yelled.

"System malfunction," the supervisor said. "Shut everything down and reinitialize."

All the screens went black, then began lighting up again one by one. The alarms shut off.

Kathryn threw her hands up and turned back to N'Taka. "Is there no way to get their attention?"

"Doesn't seem like it." N'Taka leaned back against an unmanned console and crossed her arms. "I'm sorry it's come to this."

"We can't give up yet."

"I've tried everything! If they had assigned someone else this task, maybe they would have more luck. But I can't think of any way to prevent this tragedy from occurring." She closed her eyes and bowed her head. "I'm sorry for all the hurt we've caused you, but maybe there's nothing we can do to fix it."

"I won't accept that." Kathryn marched over to her new friend and grasped her shoulders. "I'm not giving up and neither should you."

"All we wanted was to be seen," N'Taka said sadly. "We wanted the same rights and privileges that everyone else has, but instead we've caused all this havoc and chaos and… This was never how it was supposed to be. I'm truly sorry for everything we've caused you today. We never meant to involve you."

"Like it or not, I'm involved now, and together we'll find a way out of this mess." On impulse, Kathryn leaned forward and hugged N'Taka quickly and gave her an encouraging smile. "Now come on. Let's find a way to get these idiots to listen to us."

=/\=

The third Kathryn materialized on _Voyager's_ Bridge and went immediately to the unmanned science console. She began scanning for the radiation field. It was faint, but it was there. She searched for the highest concentration of the radiation and tried to lock the sensors onto it. She was certain there was something there emitting the radiation, but the sensors were having trouble penetrating the field to find out. She recalibrated them again and again, trying to get a glimpse inside the cloud.

Why would someone deliberately create a cloud of radiation to disrupt their sensors? Were the resistance fighters trying to keep them from beaming down to the planet, or was this caused by someone else? How could she get around the scattering effect it was having on the sensors to get the transporters to function enough to beam Chakotay out of harm's way?

Suddenly, the sensors began to beep at her.

"I'm reading an explosion on the surface of the planet," Harry said.

"Dammit!" Kathryn slapped the console. She was running out of time.

"Where?" Tuvok inquired.

"The capital city, where the captain is," Harry replied.

"No more loops," Kathryn said grimly. Pushing away from the console, she jumped up and dashed towards the turbolift. "This ends now, one way or another."


	5. Chapter 5

Captain Janeway walked slowly through the streets of the city, quietly window-shopping as she made her way towards the café where she was meeting Chakotay for a lunch date. Suddenly, a streak of light shot down from the sky and crashed the ground with an enormous explosion. The force of the shock wave knocked Kathryn off her feet.

Chunks of debris flew up into the air in every direction. Screams sounded from further into the city and a knot began to form in Kathryn's stomach. Chakotay was in there somewhere. This was the nightmare scenario that had kept her from admitting her love to him for so long – watching helplessly as danger overcame them and his life was threatened.

A mad rush of terrified people knocked her to the ground and caused her to choke on the dust their running feet stirred up. She regained her balance on trembling legs just as the next explosion rocked the ground.

"Janeway to _Voyager_," she hailed. "We need an emergency beam-out."

_"We are unable to get a lock on you at the moment,_" Tuvok's annoyingly calm tones responded. _"There is some kind of atmospheric radiation above your position, likely caused by the explosions. It is rendering the targeting scanners inoperative in that area. You must clear the region before we can beam you out._"

"Acknowledged. I'll find Chakotay and call you when we're out."

Setting her eyes on the burning horizon, she took off running. Somewhere in that mess of rubble was the man who set her heart racing, and she would be damned if she would let the universe take him from her.

=/\=

A ball of fire burst from the rear of _Voyager_ as the shuttle bay door exploded outwards. The _Delta Flyer_ shot like a missile out of the launch bay and flew towards the planet below.

Kathryn's hands danced over the console as she performed evasive manoeuvres to keep _Voyager_ from locking a tractor beam on the shuttle. Her jaw clenched as she pushed the shuttle's engines to their limit, hoping against hope that she would make it in time.

An image of Chakotay's bleeding face flashed across her mind. She shook her head sharply and focussed her eyes on the sensor readouts.

_Come on, just a little further,_ she silently coaxed the _Flyer_. _We just need to get under that radiation cloud and then I can beam them out of there._

=/\=

"Chakotay!" Kathryn yelled frantically, shoving her way through the throng of people. She found what she supposed used to be the café, but it was little more than rubble now. She searched around desperately for his familiar face. "Chakotay!"

"Kathryn!" She finally heard his voice over the din around them. "Kathryn!"

She ran towards the sound of it but hit the pavement hard as another building exploded nearby. Dust filled her lungs and she fought to draw breath. She pushed herself up off the ground and scanned through the haze around her. Rubble was piled high where people had been standing moments before, with Chakotay among them.

"No!" she cried, dashing towards the rubble.

Just as her hands touched the crumbling stone, she felt a transporter beam take hold of her.

She materialized in the cockpit of the _Delta Flyer_, Chakotay lying before her, barely conscious.

"Oh, Chakotay." She knelt down beside him and touched a hand to his face.

"I'm okay," he coughed.

"No, you're not." She looked around for a medkit and her eyes landed on the helm seat.

No one was flying the shuttle.

"What the hell?" She jumped up and checked the monitor. The 'autopilot' light was on, with a course back to _Voyager_ laid in.

=/\=

The ghost Kathryn knelt beside Chakotay and traced a finger along the lines of his tattoo. "You'll be okay now," she said softly, knowing he couldn't hear her.

She watched the material Kathryn find the medkit and bring it over to tend to Chakotay as well as she could.

"Kathryn," she heard Chakotay rasp, "if I don't make it… I want you to have this." He withdrew his hand from his pocket and handed her a small velvet box.

"I'll keep it for now," the material Kathryn said, taking the box, "but I won't open it, and you can give it to me properly when you get better."

Suddenly, the comm system crackled to life and Tuvok's voice echoed in the room.

The ghost Kathryn smiled, knowing that they would be alright now. She began to feel light-headed and looked down to see that her body was fading out of reality. It seemed that time was being set back to normal now. Her work had been completed, and the temporal loops were over.

Neither her material counterpart nor her lover noticed as the ghost of herself faded away into nothingness.

=/\=

The turbolift doors swished open and Captain Janeway strode onto the Bridge.

Commander Tuvok rose from her chair to greet her. "What is the Doctor's prognosis?"

"He's operating on Chakotay now. He says he'll be fine, but he'll be off-duty for a few days to recover. It's lucky you beamed us out when you did, otherwise it might've been too late for him." She crossed her arms and tilted her head. "That was a risky gambit, sending the _Delta Flyer_ out on autopilot like that."

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "We did not. The shuttle appeared to come to life on its own and resisted all of our attempts to shut it down. It even shot out the launch bay doors when we locked them down."

Kathryn looked surprised. "Must have been a ghost," she shrugged.


	6. Chapter 6

The door chimed at 19:01. Kathryn smiled at his punctuality and bid Chakotay enter.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Like I got hit by a bomb and buried under rubble," he replied tiredly.

Kathryn offered a sympathetic smile and laid a hand on his chest. "Dinner can wait," she said. "Let's sit for a while."

They moved to the couch and Chakotay pulled her in close. She nestled into his side and sighed contentedly.

"Thank you for the flowers you left in my quarters," he said. "It was very sweet of you."

"My pleasure," she smiled. "By the way, I still have something of yours." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the velvet box.

"Did you open it?"

"No."

"How remarkably restrained of you."

Kathryn turned the box over in her hand and looked up at her companion. "Did you have something you wanted to ask me?"

He smiled and took the box from her. "I had a whole speech planned out," he said, "but now I don't remember a word of it.

"Kathryn, you've been the brightest light in my life these last few years. You're what keeps me getting out of bed in the morning, and what I look forward to at night. I can't imagine my life without you in it, and I hope you'll be by my side for a long time yet. I don't want to spend another day apart from you, so…" He opened the little box to reveal a gleaming silver ring adorned with sparkling blue sapphires. "Will you marry me?"

Kathryn blinked back the tears of joy pricking at her eyes and leaned up to kiss his cheek. "Yes," she said.

Chakotay hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. "I was thinking that while we're here we could ask the Azkarians to officiate, and do it quickly before either of us nearly dies again."

Kathryn nodded. "A very good idea."

He took the ring out of its box and slipped it on her finger. It fit perfectly.

Chakotay cupped Kathryn's face with his hands and pulled her in for a deep, passionate kiss. She leaned into him, wrapping her arms about his neck and opening her lips to his tongue's exploratory probing. When they finally broke apart, she leaned her forehead against his and said, "If you're not feeling up to anything more, we'd better stop this right here."

"I think a little workout would do me good," Chakotay replied. "Do you think dinner can wait?"

"Screw dinner. I want dessert." And with that, Kathryn claimed his lips once more.


End file.
